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Less than 500 students voted in last week’s SGA elections. The representative student body, SGA, has the potential to be a powerful voice on campus that can present administrators with suggestions and solutions backed by the weight of the student body. With approximately 1/6th of the student body voting for the 31 open positions in SGA, the student body has failed to support the only organization on campus that has the ability to get student ideas to administrators.
SGA’s of the past have helped students with little things on campus like clocks in the classrooms to larger concerns such as the current project to have left-over caf points at the end of the year used to buy food for the homeless. The Senate needs students to function as an efficient organization. Students need to run for offices, vote for their representatives and attend the weekly meetings to enact change on campus.
Students are letting down SGA with low levels of participation making it nearly impossible for the group to effectively represent the student body. The apathy of students in voting and even running for office, five positions remain vacant, is undercutting SGA’s ability to speak with authority. The administrators of the University are not going to value the voices of student representatives if the students do not care.
The low voter turnout for this election cycle originates from the change in voting. Instead of having elections for sophomore, junior and senior positions in the Spring and then freshmen elections in the Fall, this year all the class positions were elected in the Fall. Another addition to the online ballot was the 14 Housing Senators.
Students can no longer complain about SGA wasting money or not doing anything for the students when the student body does not event take five minutes to vote for SGA representatives.
Ryan Harvey, SGA vice president of administration, attributes the low voting number to the new system of having all positions up for the student body to vote.
According to Harvey, the candidates are responsible for encouraging students to vote and not that of the already elected SGA members.
With confusion being pegged as the main reason for almost half as many students voting for SGA representatives this year compared with previous years, SGA failed to inform student of the changes. SGA publicized the new voting practices and encouraged people to vote by manning a table in the caf, posting signs in the quad and a mass e-mail from SGA President Kevin Mills.
The Senate also chose to raise awareness by bringing a goat to campus for two hours during the day of voting. The “vote goat” was used to spark conversation and create a way to liven up student debate, Mills said.
With major changes in voting SGA needed to inform students about the changes and encourage them to vote.
To fill the empty seats the elected representatives of the Senate nominated students at Wednesday’s meeting. The students will be contacted by SGA to determine if they desire to serve. The nominees for the empty seats will speak to the Senate at next week’s meeting behind closed doors, and a vote will be taken for their temporary confirmation. They will serve until the next election in November, Harvey said.
These appointed senators will have the same voting power as the class and housing senators that were elected by the students without actually being elected by the student body.
It is important for the Senate to have two-thirds of its members present at the meetings to pass or debate resolutions. For the 38 voting positions, one of which is Mills used to break a tie, means that only 13 members can be missing.
With the five empty seats only eight members of the Senate can be absent. If the empty seats were holding up SGA from progressing the spots should be filled as quickly as possible. The positions are not holding up SGA, and students should be allowed to run and vote again, this time with notice from SGA about the changes.
Submitted 09-21-2006
MALIBU, CA
